backtop

Print E-mail del.icio.us 20 comment(s) - last by coldpower27.. on Jul 13 at 7:48 AM

Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B  (Source: Hitachi)
Second generation 1TB drive uses 43% less power than the original

Hitachi was first out of the gates with a 1TB HDD and the other major hard drive makers -- Seagate and Samsung -- had to play catch up. Hitachi announced its second generating 1TB HDD this week that promises to be the most energy efficient 1TB 7,200 RPM hard drive in the world.

The drive is known as the Deskstar 7K1000.B and the main feature is the use of three platters that each store 374GB of data. With the drive only needing three platters, the idle power consumption of the drive is reduced up to 43% over Hitachi’s first generation 1TB HDD. The 7K1000.B also offers users the option of bulk data encryption (BDE) for the entire contents of the drive.

The 7K1000.B makes use of perpendicular magnetic recording and the drive’s BDE option uses AES encryption certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to deliver the strongest commercially available levels of security for data.

Power requirement for the 7K1000.B is 5.2W at idle and the drive uses a 16MB cache. The drive has a maximum media transfer rate of 1388 Mbits/s.  The Hitachi 7K1000.B will ship worldwide in July at an undisclosed price.

For enterprise users needing a high mean time between failure (MTBF), a DeskstarE7K1000 drive is also being introduced that has up to a 32MB buffer and a 1.2 million hour MTBF featuring the same low power requirements and optional encryption technology.

The first generation Hitachi 1TB HDD was released in January 2007.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
looks good on paper
By DeepBlue1975 on 7/10/2008 12:18:57 PM , Rating: 2
1388mbits/s = 173.5 MB/s

If it can really attain a max str near that, it can be really interesting for apps depending a lot in str.
But I'd rather guess that the figure talks about burst transfer speeds rather than a sustained one.




RE: looks good on paper
By RamarC on 7/10/2008 12:32:41 PM , Rating: 2
burst is usually from the cache. media transfer rate is just that, from the disk itself.

there is some overhead so you can't simply divide the mtr by 1024 to get a real use MB/s. the 'old' 7k1000 had a mtr of 1070mbits/s and a peak transfer rate of about 85MB/sec so this one could be expected to hit 105MB/s.


RE: looks good on paper
By Goty on 7/10/2008 12:59:28 PM , Rating: 2
Umm... since when is the conversion from Mb to MB 1024?


RE: looks good on paper
By DeepBlue1975 on 7/10/2008 1:29:29 PM , Rating: 2
Yep, he got confused there, but he has a point about the overhead and the figures he posted are coherent with that...
Though we're talking about some 50%+ difference in the example of the 1st gen drive, so there is something more than overhead involved, and that's the reason I said I suspected some sort of burst speed, which is also in line - to some degree - with results from tests.


RE: looks good on paper
By sprockkets on 7/10/2008 2:06:36 PM , Rating: 2
8 bits = 1 byte

Not hard to convert.

173.5 MB is correct.

NOW, if you want it in Windows terms/Binary, then the 173.5MB = 165.46 MiB. Just as 4700MB = 4482.3 MiB for a DVD.

But what OS uses the right term anyhow? Measure everything in bytes and you can't go wrong :)


RE: looks good on paper
By Oregonian2 on 7/10/2008 2:30:31 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
But what OS uses the right term anyhow? Measure everything in bytes and you can't go wrong :)


I agree with your conclusion, but I think it's the OS's that use the correct measurement (binary interpretation of "Mega") seeing as how it's a binary computer. It'd be funny saying that a Megabyte image in memory can't be written out to a Megabyte of disk space because it doesn't fit (and memory is binarily addressed so they're definitely in the binary-Mega camp). :-)


RE: looks good on paper
By DeepBlue1975 on 7/10/2008 3:44:03 PM , Rating: 2
You got me confused there:

Aren't mibs the smaller units, meaning millions of breasts?
I always thought Megabyte and Megabit are the correct binary units, and so converting megabits to megabytes only requires dividing by 8bits/byte.

If the article said something like 1388000000 bits, to turn it to bytes you'd divide by 8, and to convert that same bit number to megabytes you'd have to divide 8.388.608 which is, well, 8 times 1.048.576, which is a mega-something in binary.

I just hate when companies use decimal prefixes in computer devices. That's another reason I'm longing to get an SSD, they are as binarily measured as any decently specd out computer component.

Say no to measurement unit mixing up! (?)


RE: looks good on paper
By TomZ on 7/10/2008 7:26:57 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Aren't mibs the smaller units, meaning millions of breasts ?

Interesting slip-up there! LOL!


RE: looks good on paper
By RamarC on 7/10/2008 3:20:52 PM , Rating: 2
y'all know i meant divide by 8 to get bytes. ;)


RE: looks good on paper
By mikeyD95125 on 7/10/2008 10:36:30 PM , Rating: 2
Did they drop the cache from 32MB to 16MB?


WD10EACS
By Shawn on 7/10/2008 1:07:18 PM , Rating: 2
How does this compare to my supposedly "green" Western Digital WD10EACS?




RE: WD10EACS
By Mr Alpha on 7/10/2008 2:08:50 PM , Rating: 2
It is most likely way faster (well, as way faster as a hard drive can be) since the WD Green Power drives achieve their lower power usage by spinning at 5400rpm most of the time to .


RE: WD10EACS
By sprockkets on 7/10/2008 2:10:49 PM , Rating: 2
The Hitachi is a 7200rpm drive, with the WD Green Drive being only 5400rpm. The WD drive should take less power, but we'll wait till testing says.


How will it compare to the old one?
By Mr Alpha on 7/10/2008 2:17:26 PM , Rating: 2
The 7K1000's good desktop performance was because of its low random access time, which in turn was a result of the five platter design. How will this new one make up for the loss of two platters?




By DeepBlue1975 on 7/10/2008 10:38:01 PM , Rating: 2
Short answer: it won't. :D

Seriously, random access times can also be improved by better (ie, faster and more accurate) step motors, and by lowering total platter surface (aside from increasing rotational speed, which, in this case, we are 100% sure they didn't).
But if they could get slightly smaller platters AND increase the areal density at the same time, while also improving the motors and not making the drive more expensive... Then I'd say that I'm gonna buy a hat, just to take it off for the engineers at Hitachi.


review please
By GarfieldtheCat on 7/10/2008 2:03:22 PM , Rating: 3
Could we have a comparison review of the Samsung F1, this new Hitachi, and the new WD black 1tb drive please?




More?
By excelsium on 7/10/2008 2:59:36 PM , Rating: 1
Have other OEMs released/announcements for 3 platter 1TB Drives?




RE: More?
By coldpower27 on 7/13/2008 7:48:11 AM , Rating: 2
Western Digital Caviar Black is also a 3 platter 1TB.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

The only OEM now without a 3 platter 1TB model is surprisingly Seagate!


By xphile on 7/10/2008 10:46:01 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
"Hitachi announced its second generating 1TB HDD this week..."


43% less power usage AND a time machine all rolled into one package!




1.2million hours MTBF?
By jimbojimbo on 7/11/2008 4:34:37 PM , Rating: 2
1,200,000 / 24 / 365 = about 137 years
Holy mackerel! Now only if they posted the MTBF for the regular drive.




"We can't expect users to use common sense. That would eliminate the need for all sorts of legislation, committee's, oversight and lawyers." -- Christopher Jennings